Coalitions: Organizational, Political, Command & Control Challenges

Coalitions are becoming the standard in military operations, involving different organizations, services and agencies. This implies new and more complex types of interaction, the challenges of which must be situated along different dimensions. This report studies the characteristics of coalitions and discusses their political, organizational, socio-cultural, technological and Command Control C2 challenges. The costs and benefits of coalition building, the recent history of coalitions, the properties of military coalitions, and finally, issues faced by coalitions with regard to the transformational context and the advent of network-centric operations are investigated.